This was our first project with Animl. The brief consisted of using animated/video backgrounds that would end on a higher resolution frame before displaying the important information.

The videos were shot without a green screen for keying, and that became the most time-consuming part of the project.

Imaging and Rotoscoping

Soon we started noticing the job would take longer than expected. The client wasn’t happy with how the video grading looked – and without time or budget to shoot again, Animl requested us to use our bag of tricks to make the grading look good.

First we cropped the 60fps 10s clips frame-by-frame, layering the background, the arm, the product bottle and the hand parts overlapping the bottle.

Although this was a lot of work for two routes, it enabled us to create a high fidelity grading that was quicker and cheaper than shooting again.

Now, the label!

After some time spent on the Grading, we were briefed to replace the labels on one of the routes, which was another time-consuming frame-by-frame effort so that it didn’t look so fake.

The Units

We created Sizmek and Celtra Units, being the most challenging part making the Celtra Ads look and behave the same as the Sizmek ones- which were using animated images instead of video so it could auto-play.

Due to another change, the specs of the Sizmek ads went from Rich Media to Standard and even though the smooth animation was lost, we managed to create a similar html5 animation to overcome the issue.